HIghlights from The Emotions of Normal People

Another case in point was that of the boy Jack, already
mentioned in chapter seven. Jack, it will be remembered,
suffered from some glandular disturbance, which seemed to
over stimulate his dominance to the point where he could
not be compelled to comply, even by physical injury. Yet,
Jack responded submissively to his " class teacher ", who
was a very gentle-mannered girl of twenty-three or twenty-
four. Despite her soft and pleasing approach, however,
Miss B. was very firm in her commands, and had a reputation
for keeping excellent order among the children in her charge.
Jack responded to this treatment more readily, even, than
did somte of the other children. Jack and Miss B. were
" great friends ". As we have already observed, Miss B.
succeeded in obtaining Jack's promise to forego his youthful
gangster activities, and this promise was kept for as long
a time as the child's physical abnormality permitted. Jack's
promise to Miss B., and his marked obedience to her com-
mands in the school room, were clearly expressions of sub-
mission and not of compliance. Jack admitted to me with
some reluctance that he " liked to mind Miss B." Sub-
mission, apparently, was even more pleasant to Jack than
was dominance, though submission occupied a much smaller
proportion of Jack's life than dominance, because he was
stimulated to dominance much more continuously than to
submission response.

This initial point of contrast between submission and compliance response is brought out in the many cases of little
boys, from three to seven years old, who respond obediently
and affectionately to their mothers, or, sometimes to nursemaids and girls older than themselves, while they may react
dominantly toward their fathers and toward older boys with
whom they play. I have had occasion to study three or four
cases of this type for short periods of time. One boy, aged
four, in the public kindergarten obeyed the commands of
an older sister, a girl between twelve and thirteen years old,
without protest and apparently with considerable pleasure
derived from the obedience itself. This same child, however,
was reported as extremely rebellious toward his father's
authority, and also caused some difficulty at school because
of disobedience to a woman teacher whose manner was rather harsh, and whose attitude was that of a strict disciplinarian.

Among cases of women dancers studied, physical love
relationships with other women seem to be the rule rather
than the exception. In several cases, well-adapted love
relationships with husband and children were not felt to be
sufficient, without supplementary love affairs with other
women. The husband, in one case (an actor) reported that
his own physical love contacts with his wife were more enjoy-
able after passion responses had been evoked from her by
another girl. In this case, also, love relationships between
the mother and her two children seemed to be enhanced rather
than diminished at such times, so far as one could observe.
Girls and women who indulge in this form of love expression
appear to feel no abnormality or unnaturalness about it, and,
in fact, frequently are not restrained from free physical love
contact with the woman lover even by the presence of other
people. A male psychologist once reported to me a case of
two girl lovers, who had been separated from one another
for some weeks by the college authorities. These girls per-
formed the love act unhesitatingly in his presence, manifesting
intense passion and captivation emotion respectively. Accord-
ing to this report, the girls regarded their love relationship as
something peculiarly sacred, and though they were both
reported as forming love relationships with males shortly
after this occurrence, these relationships with men did not
appear to detract in any way from their love for one
another.


Verified instances of the same type have come to my atten-
tion in connection with love affairs of Parisienne dancers with
both males and other girls. In one instance a girl begged her
male lover to be allowed to perform a physical love act with
another girl at the conclusion of her relationship with him,
and in his presence. Recently an extremely able and emi-
nently practical business-man told me with complete tolerance
and lack of surprise, that two girl employees had been seen
enjoying physical love relationship with one another, in a

public portion of the office building, where the act was almost
certain to be witnessed by other women workers. In reporting
the general trend of female love relationships of this type, I
have selected merely those cases illustrating the apparent
supremacy of passion over other influences which might be
thought to have had the strongest inhibitory effect upon the
physical love relationship between one girl and another. So
long as a woman possesses two distinct love mechanisms,
both stimulable from the environment by stimulus persons
of different types, it seems highly probable that she will con-
tinue to enjoy both types of love relationship whenever pos-
sible, despite attempted social prohibition of one or both
varieties of love behaviour.

With regard to the possibly deleterious effect upon women's
physical health of this type of love relationship with other
women, I have been unable to verify a male medical opinion,
given me at the beginning of my investigation, that such love
affairs between girls were always injurious to their physical
health. Some deleterious results appeared, however, in cases
where the women who were carrying on the physical relation-
ships in question were members of a segregated group in a
penal institution. In this group of female prisoners studied,
some twenty women or more, out of the total prison popula-
tion (both white and negroes) of ninety-seven, were known
to be carrying on love affairs with other women. Two of
these women had shown loss of weight and general physical
deterioration, as a result, seemingly, of the excessive amount
of passion response repeatedly evoked by their female lovers,
under circumstances preventing the women thus expressing
passion from obtaining any counterbalance of love captivation
excitement from relationships with males. In the other cases,
the prison matrons and physician could determine no symp-
toms of physical deterioration traceable in any way to a love
relationship. In several instances, on the other hand, the
emotional attitude of both women lovers toward prison
discipline and compulsory work, was shown to have improved
after the beginning of the love affair. Other cases of captiva-
tion-passion relationships between girls which have been
reported to me, where medical examinations were available,
the cases being, of course, outside segretegad or institutional
groups, seem to indicate that no emotional or physical results
of a deleterious nature could be detected.